


Under the Iris

by timehopper



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Demon Hunters, Double Penetration, Dubious Consent, Frottage, M/M, Mind Control, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:22:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27189253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timehopper/pseuds/timehopper
Summary: When Hanzo and McCree are summoned to a remote village to track down and eliminate  some cultists, they encounter far more than they bargained for.
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada
Comments: 2
Kudos: 46
Collections: Danger & Dread: A McHanzo Horror Collection





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written for Danger and Dread: a McHanzo Horror Fanzine. Unfortunately, the project was cancelled... so here is the fic in full for free instead, posted for Day 25 of Kinktober: Tentacles.
> 
> PLEASE MIND THE TAGS. This fic involves elements of mind control, and thus contains dubious consent. If that is something that makes you uncomfortable, I advise you not continue with this fic.

There’s something thick in the air. Something heavy, dense. It’s like static, electric and frizzy and prickling at the edges of Hanzo’s consciousness. He can’t see it – but he almost can, there, in the corner, dancing like smoke and sparks, if he doesn’t look right at it – but it’s undoubtedly there. 

The cultist is close, then. 

Hanzo’s fingers curl around his stein. They drum against it in a false rhythm. The dew of condensation mutes the noise, turns it into something else. Something almost silent, imperceptible unless one were paying attention.

And he knows someone is.

The stranger watches him from the back of the tavern. He leans against the wall, head lowered as if resting. It’s hard to see his face from beneath the wide brim of his kasa; harder still for the mask that covers his jaw.

Hanzo lifts the stein to his lips and drinks. The stranger watches him, pushing the kasa up with a thumb. His eyes are green – too green, glowing in the dark.

He drains the stein in one go. The ale warms him from the inside out. It’s pleasant to the taste, a tiny glimmer of light to precede what he is about to face. 

When naught but the dregs remain, Hanzo stands. He slides his payment over the counter, the slide of the coins against polished wood like the tolling of funeral bells. The stranger continues to watch him.

He leaves. 

Hanzo follows, knowing it’s a trap. The stranger is a few paces in front of him, enough that if Hanzo were to run he could close the distance immediately. He considers it a moment before the stranger turns to look at him over his shoulder. 

The stranger’s eyes flash. He runs. 

Hanzo follows. And just like that, the hunt is on.

He follows the stranger into the woods. The trees are thick, their branches jumbled and jagged. Hanzo ducks beneath them, leaps over roots and stumps with ease. He’s agile despite his unfamiliarity with the terrain, and he narrows the gap between himself and his prey quickly. But the stranger moves just as easily, fluid in the underbrush as if he were cutting through it. He leaps into a tree, jumps from branch to branch, and the gap grows again. Hanzo considers doing the same, but the stranger is smaller than him, more lean (though not by much). He is not certain the dry and cracking branches of old, decades-dead trees will hold him. 

So he runs. He runs until the spaces between rotting trunks grows smaller and smaller, and he throws himself against them with no care for the cuts and scrapes the rough bark engrave into his arms. He can hardly fit between the gaps by the time the stranger looks back at him, green eyes glowing brightly in the suffocating darkness, but –

The treeline breaks. Hanzo bursts into a clearing and stumbles to a halt as the stranger touches down in front of him. He backs up a pace, reaches to draw an arrow from the quiver on his back. The stranger chuckles, but the laughter does not meet his eyes. 

“You have done well to follow me this far, Hanzo,” he says, and Hanzo’s blood runs cold. There’s a reverb to the man’s voice, almost an echo, as if he were speaking with two voices. But beneath it, the tone, the inflection, the sound of it is familiar, too familiar…

Hanzo’s breath trembles. He draws the arrow. “How do you know my name?” 

Again, the stranger laughs. He ignores the question and reaches up to unclasp the mask at his jaw. “I suppose you have come to finish the job, then.” 

Hanzo nocks the arrow. His blood unfreezes and pumps rapidly throughout his body. He can feel flickers of electricity dance through him as though a beast within him awakens with his fear. He repeats, louder: “How do you know my name?!” 

The man lets his mask fall, and Hanzo drops his bow. He falls to his knees, enitre body shaking. “No…” 

Genji draws the sword at his hip. He steps forward. One foot falls at a time, deliberate, loud and echoing in the clearing despite the grass dampening the sound. 

The tip of the sword points directly between Hanzo’s eyes. He looks up into the scarred, rotting face of his younger brother. The same brother he once thought dead. 

“I killed you,” Hanzo says, sounding for all the world like he really had come face-to-face with a ghost. “You should be dead – I _burned_ your body—” He swallows down the bile that rises in his throat at the memory of the fire. The sight, the heat, the smell. “How is this possible?” 

“The world was not finished with me,” Genji says. Without the mask, his voice is strained, raspy. Hanzo looks at his throat. He remembers giving Genji those scars, clean across its width.

“That does not explain—”

The sword flashes. Hanzo flinches, rearing back in pain. He grunts, but does not cry out, does not reach to stop the bleeding from his lip. It’s been sliced open; there’s not much he can do as he is now. And he’s already shown more than enough weakness. 

“My master was not finished with me,” Genji says. He looks down at Hanzo, eyes empty but for the ghastly green glow they emanate. “He saved me. He showed me the truth.” 

“What _truth_?” Hanzo spits, speaking from the undamaged corner of his mouth. He clutches his bow once more and rises to his feet, finally finding himself again through anger. He draws another arrow, aims it directly at Genji’s head. “Tell me what happened!”

He looses the arrow. Genji deflects it easily; it lands in the ground a few feet away with a soft _thunk_. “I will not fight you, brother,” he says, voice as empty as his eyes. 

“Then you will die a second death.” 

Hanzo fires another arrow. Then another, and another. Genji avoids all of them, ducking and whirling and spinning and pivoting out of their way with ease. It’s like he’s dancing, like he’s playing some sort of game. But his brother never moved like that. He never slithered like a snake in the grass or an eel through water. Genji’s movements were always quick, short, like a tiny bird. Like a sparrow. 

Whoever this person is – whatever this _thing_ is – it is not the Genji that Hanzo knew. 

“Why won’t you fight me?!” Hanzo demands. 

For the first time, Genji smiles. The curl of his lip is all wrong. It is not the confident, cocky smirk Genji wore in his childhood. It is hollow, vacant. It does not reach his eyes.

“There is no need to fight,” he says simply. “For I have forgiven you.” 

Hanzo sees red. He very nearly roars as he raises his bow once more. He reaches for another arrow, electricity roaring in his ears, but his fingers find nothing but empty air. He grits his teeth; sparks fly from his skin. He is out of arrows – but not options. 

“Forgiven me?!” Hanzo yells. He lunges for Genji, raising his bow like a sword. He swings it at Genji, but again, the thing that wears his brother’s rotting skin swerves out of the way, silky and fluid in its dance. 

“Yes. Were it not for you, I never would have met my master. I never would have _understood_.” His eyes glow and his hand snaps out to catch Hanzo’s bow as it comes down near his head. His smile grows into a grin, wide and toothy and would-be manic were it not for the void in Genji’s green, green eyes. 

“I can help you understand, Hanzo,” he breathes. Genji pulls the bow closer to himself. “I can show you _everything_.”

“Enough!” Hanzo yanks the bow back out of Genji’s grip the same moment he slams his foot into his brother’s gut. Genji falls backward and lands on the ground with a _crack_. Hanzo does not have time to care about what has broken: all he knows to do is climb on top of Genji, hold him down and pin him in place.

And then, at last, Genji brings a blade up to protect himself.

Yet still he does not strike. Hanzo grabs his wrist and, with great effort, manages to twist it so that the blade of the wakizashi points at Genji’s neck instead of his own. He does not stop to think how painful it must be, at what an awkward angle Genji’s wrist is being held. (He does not stop to think that this would break any normal man’s wrist.) Genji himself shows no signs of discomfort - just that same eerie, empty stare. 

“You can kill me again, Hanzo,” Genji says. He does not blink when the blade slips closer to his throat. “But before you do, let me help you. Let my master show you what he showed me. Let us _save_ you.” 

“Who is this master?” Hanzo demands through gritted teeth. His hand wavers as Genji struggles to push it away. But then Genji smiles, calmly, as if overcome by a wave of gentle bliss.

“ _I am.”_

The figure emerges from the shadow of the woods, two glowing circles in the dark, and then more: small lights, cracks in nothingness, and eyes. Too many eyes, too large, circling about the silhouette of what perhaps, at one time, may have been a man. 

Hanzo freezes. Something holds him in place that he cannot name: it is the sort of paralysis fear creates in weaker creatures, manifesting deep in his heart and wrapping around his limbs, his chest, his throat.

The figure raises its hand. An eye blinks at Hanzo from the palm, slitted pupils growing and contracting as it gazes deep into his mind. 

“There is nothing to fear, my child,” the figure says. Its voice reverberates through the clearing, bouncing all around Hanzo and echoing in his head. “We only wish to open your eyes.” 

The tentacles covering its mouth curl and undulate, reaching toward Hanzo as if beckoning to him. Hanzo’s muscles twitch with the desire to move; he fights the urge to give in, to let them draw him closer. 

_Nothing to fear Nothing to fear Open your eyes there is nothing to fear_

“What have you done to him?!” Hanzo shouts, voice distant in his own ears. The laughter that follows his words is cold, hollow, and it echoes even louder than the words in his mind. 

“I saved him,” the cultist says. He steps – no, hovers – closer, extending both hands now, palm-up. The eyes in them gaze at the sky and Hanzo follows them without thinking. Above him, everything is green. So very, very green.

“I found him on the brink of death.” The words are soft now, whispered in his ear, but the cultist is still many feet away. “I held out my hand to him, as I do to you now.” 

Hanzo blinks. The cultist is in front of him. Green light creeps in around his peripheral vision, blocking everything but the cultist’s face (his eyes, his eyes, the writhing tentacles that reach for Hanzo like a lover begging to be embraced). 

_Brink of death Nothing to fear Open your eyes_

“He told me to open my eyes,” Genji says, and his voice is almost nothing at all. 

_Open your eyes Open your eyes_

“He told me it would save my life.”

_Save your life Please Hanzo please Open your eyes_

His hand shakes; his grip falters. He drops the sword and it clatters against Genji’s chest, slitting it open and pouring out his blood. Genji laughs, breathlessly, a horrible ( _Beautiful_ ) gurgling sound.

_Please Hanzo We want to save you We want to heal you_

He wants to fight it. He tries to fight it. He struggles against the paralysis, thrashes against his fear, but something wraps around his wrists and ankles and pulls them back, spreads him open, lifts him into the air. 

He looks down at the cultist. Everything is so green, so green, so green. 

A translucent tendril reaches for his face, caresses him. It unfurls from the cultist’s back with the others, the things holding him in place. It tilts his chin up, forces his gaze to the stars, green and blinking and winking at him. 

“Let us save you, Hanzo,” the cultist whispers. 

_Nothing to fear Nothing to fear We will show you the truth_

“Open your eyes.” 

_Let us save you Hanzo Open your eyes Open your eyes Open your eyes—_

He does.

The sky opens up. A hole tears into the heavens. Black swallows the stars and explodes in an aurora of green, green, _green_. 

And Hanzo sees _everything_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you enjoyed this and think you might like to see more, have a chat, or would like to get to know me, please check out my twitter [@tim3hopp3r](https://twitter.com/tim3hopp3r).
> 
> And If you would like to find out how to support me, I have a handy list of links right [here](https://twitter.com/tim3hopp3r/status/1292897632323399681). Please check it out! I wouldn't be able to do this without people like you supporting me. ♥
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally written for Danger and Dread: a McHanzo Horror Fanzine. Unfortunately, the project was cancelled... so here is the fic in full for free instead, posted for Day 25 of Kinktober: Tentacles.
> 
> PLEASE MIND THE TAGS. This fic involves elements of mind control, and thus contains dubious consent. If that is something that makes you uncomfortable, I advise you not continue with this fic.

Cultists. Not his favourite kind of job. The damn things are like flies, nestling into rot and multiplying faster than they can be killed off. It’s dirty work, bloody and disconcerting. The people who buy into the kind of cult McCree is paid to eradicate aren’t dangerous themselves, just delusional; but the powers they try to mess with are anything but imaginary. 

The moon is bright tonight, even despite its waning. The silver light it casts over the village makes the night seem charged, ethereal; an ornate veil over a dying beast. 

A flicker of red breaks the silver expanse, a slow flash of it as he takes a deep drag of his cigar. There’s an inn around here somewhere, already paid for. He just has to find it. 

And so he walks, gravel crackling under his boot as he does. His footsteps are heavy, but deliberate – quiet without the effort of concealing his presence. Jesse McCree always has been one for theatrics. 

It doesn’t take long to find his destination, but he does not find it before something else finds him. 

The hairs on the back of his neck prickle. A chill runs down McCree’s spine; a spark of green glints in the corner of his vision, and Jesse McCree turns on his heel, fast as a whip – gun drawn, cocked, and pointed directly at the figure behind him.

A second later he relaxes. Brow unfurling, shoulders slumping, McCree smiles at an old friend. 

“Howdy, Archer.” 

The archer smiles back. But in his joy, McCree does not notice that it does not meet his eyes.

* * *

They retreat to a tavern, small and near the edge of the village. They buy their drinks, chat idly about what sort of jobs they’d taken on since they last met, and McCree lets his eyes roll over Hanzo’s form, taking in the curve of his shoulder, the lines of his tattoo, the drops of liquor that linger on his lips. 

They don’t stay long. 

* * *

The door closes, and McCree immediately shoves Hanzo’s back against it. 

Hanzo sighs and bares his neck. McCree takes it for the invitation it is and moves right in, kissing up and down it until he finds a good spot to sink his teeth in. Hanzo’s body jerks, and Jesse hikes him up the wall by hooking his arms under his legs. 

“Quiet tonight, aren’tcha?” he mumbles against Hanzo’s neck. He feels a hand come up and tangle in his hair, pulling him away. He meets Hanzo’s eye and wonders briefly if there had always been little green flecks in them, or if he’s just imagining it now, but his attention is quickly drawn instead to where it should be: Hanzo’s mouth, smirking at him, teasing him.

“Give me something to scream about.” 

A grin breaks wide over McCree’s face, splitting it in two as he rises to the challenge. He pulls Hanzo down to him, kissing him hard and rough with tongue and teeth and hot, hot breath. Fingers dig into his shoulder blades and rest against his scalp, but they do not move, do not roam as they normally might. McCree hardly notices, though – not when Hanzo presses back against him so firmly, so readily. 

He pulls them away from the wall, throws Hanzo onto the bed. Hanzo grabs for him at the same time McCree crawls on top of him and stares down into his dark green eyes. 

He shrugs off his coat, tosses it aside. His shirt follows quickly, and Hanzo’s eyes flicker down to rove over the newly-exposed skin. 

Soon, Hanzo’s hands are tracing the paths his eyes have laid out, blunt nails ghosting over skin, over muscle, over scars. There's something off about it, though, something stilted in the way his fingertips run over the bumps and curves that mar McCree’s skin, something hollow beneath a fractured shell of curiosity. It's as if Hanzo is getting used to this, as if he hadn't long ago memorized and mapped the dips and contours of McCree's body with his hands, his teeth, his tongue. 

But then Hanzo slides down the bed and kisses him, just below his iliac furrow in the spot that drives him crazy, and McCree doesn't feel the need to worry about it anymore. He gasps and, head turned to the ceiling, breathes, “You ready to see the stars, sugar?” 

Hanzo pulls him down. “Show me everything.” 

Their lips crash together, and McCree no longer has to think. Not about the job, not about himself, not about anything – nothing but the way Hanzo feels beneath him, against him, around him: steady, strong, firm and all-encompassing, like a shadow snuffing out a candle. 

He does not see the way Hanzo watches him, unblinking, as they whittle away the small hours of the night in each others’ embrace. 

* * *

McCree wakes to an empty bed. 

He groans and sits u/p, putting a hand to his forehead. Something aches behind his eyelids, something green and oily, dripping in the corners of his mind and plip-plip-plipping in his consciousness. He’s not hungover – he can’t be. He didn’t have nearly enough to drink last night. 

McCree grits his teeth. Squeezes his eyes shut tighter. His ears are ringing. Nightmares? He can’t remember dreaming, just the phantom sensation of something around his neck, strangling him, whispering that everything would be okay –

No. Nothing. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t think of what appeared to him in his dreams last night. But there had to be something, right? Why would he feel such an eerie chill, even so long into daylight, otherwise? 

He opens his eyes and nearly jumps out of his crawling skin. Hanzo sits on the bed opposite him, still undressed, and staring at him as if looking through and into him all at once. The look is uncanny. It makes McCree want to crawl away, scamper back. 

No. Not away, toward. On his knees, reaching, grasping, taking –

He blinks. The feeling dissipates, curling into the air like smoke. 

“Something the matter, Hanzo?” 

Hanzo blinks too, slowly. His expression hardly changes, and he takes a second to respond, “No.” 

Something doesn’t sit quite right about that answer, but McCree shakes it off. He holds out a hand and beckons Hanzo to him. “What’re you doin’ over there, anyhow?” 

Hanzo’s lips pitch upward in the middle, almost into a pout. Like he doesn’t quite know how to answer. But then, lightly, airily: “I was… thinking.” 

“Thinking.” Something tugs at McCree to ask. Something else tells him not to. He follows the latter voice, trusting it more. “Well, why don’t you come over here and tell me about it? I’ve been doing some thinking myself…” 

Hanzo’s eyes widen a fraction, and his lips twitch, half-curling up into what might have been a smile had he let it grow. Something flutters in McCree’s heart, and when he thinks that this might be the most human Hanzo has looked since the last time they met, something else silences the thought. 

* * *

Nights pass. Days, too, and every one of them McCree wakes with green twinkling in his peripheral vision, and with every hour that passes the memory of that glimmer fades until he can no longer recall it.

He tells Hanzo about the dreams he cannot remember. Hanzo tells him they are only dreams.

* * *

Three nights after they first meet in the village, he tells Hanzo he thinks the dreams are a sign. 

“A sign of what?” 

“That maybe we’re gettin’ close,” he says. “To the cultists. Maybe whatever they’re trying to do is working. Maybe they’re gettin’ stronger.” 

Hanzo studies him, then. That same look, the one that bores deep into his core and all the way through him at the same time. McCree is about to ask when finally, Hanzo says, “I found something.” 

He balks. “When? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I only found it today,” he says. “I think I know where they have been hiding.” 

There’s something in his voice. Something empty and foreboding. McCree can’t put his finger on it, but a voice in the back of his mind whispers Follow him and he nods, suddenly certain that tonight, the hunt will finally reach its end.

“Good,” he says, and his voice feels coarse, distant, unused. “Let’s gear up. Soon as the sun goes down, we’ll set out.” 

Hanzo smiles. It does not reach his eyes, but insidious pleasure swirls within them anyway.

“Yes,” he says. “Of course.” 

* * *

Daylight fades, dusk settles in, and night falls. 

Hanzo waits for him at the village gates. McCree does not know where he had gone in the hours since they had parted – he certainly hadn’t stopped into the tavern for their customary pre-hunt drink. Whatever preparations Hanzo had made, they must have been serious. 

“Everythin’ all right?” McCree asks, once they set off toward the woods bordering the village. 

“Yes,” Hanzo says. He does not look at McCree. “I am merely… anxious about tonight.” 

“Mm. Ain’t we all.” He reaches for the flask tied to his belt and takes a long, much-needed drink. He holds it out to Hanzo in offering. “Want some?” 

“No. Thank you.” 

They pass through the treeline. McCree returns the flask to his belt. “Must really be off tonight,” he says, slowly. “It ain’t normal for you not to be drinkin’.” 

Hanzo shrugs with one shoulder. The movement is stiff. “What we are dealing with may be greater than you anticipate,” he says. “I would rather not impair myself.” 

McCree wants to protest, but he stays silent. True enough, he’s often come face-to-face with more than he’d first bargained for when on a hunt. Maybe Hanzo has a point. Maybe he should listen.

They keep walking. The deeper into the woods they go, the denser and darker it gets. Moon and starlight struggle to slip through the canopy, and every sound, every cracking branch beneath their feet, seems to pierce the silent night, ten times louder than normal. It sets McCree’s teeth on edge.

The feeling is comforting, though. He’s long since gotten used to it. And besides, he has Hanzo at his side. If something goes wrong, there’s someone here to watch his back.

As if sensing his thoughts, Hanzo turns his head from a few steps ahead. He holds a finger to his lips to silence McCree. 

“We are here.” 

He slips through the trees, silent as a wraith. McCree follows, step by step by step, back into the light of the moon.

He comes to a stop in the centre of a small clearing, a few steps past where the dense treeline breaks. McCree looks up to the sky and to the stars twinkling overhead. Were there always that many? Or – no, that’s not right. There used to be more, didn’t there? 

McCree shakes his head, lifts a hand so that his fingertips brush his hairline. His head hurts all of a sudden, like it’s been covered by a thick fog, veiled by a persistent green mist. 

“This… Is this the place?” he asks. His voice feels rough, loose. Unlike him. Like there’s a lump in his throat he has to swallow around, but it’s fluid and pliable and far too big. His vision swims. Why is he so dizzy? 

He looks away. Lowers his head. And then, just like that, the fog clears, and McCree turns to look at Hanzo. Turns to see… eyes. Green eyes. 

McCree freezes. Hanzo’s eyes are green. Bright, unnatural, luminescent green. 

And at last, he understands. 

McCree sways. He leans a hand against a tree trunk for support as he tries to right himself. He manages eventually, and raises his head, glowering at Hanzo from below his browline. “It was you. This whole time, you were the one I was lookin’ for.” 

His arm hangs at his side. McCree is purposely conscious of it. His fingers flex, ready to draw his gun at a moment’s notice. Hanzo’s eyes flicker at the motion, from McCree’s face to his hand and then back again. He crosses his arms. Something moves behind him, black and inky and lined with green light. So much light, bursting and pulsing from the inside of it as if it’s leaking out, seeping out, desperate to be freed. The ink unfurls, warps and distorts until it becomes a mass of writhing limbs, tentacle-like, grasping and reaching for something Jesse cannot see. 

“Do not struggle, Jesse,” Hanzo says, in a voice that is only half his own. “It is not your fault.” 

Not your fault not your fault, a voice echoes in his mind. We knew this would happen We know you We want to take you home We want to bring you back

He shakes his head, tries to clear the voice from it. The voice? The voice. No. Voices. There are so many whispering a hysterical cacophony. “Back… where?” He swallows the viscous lump in his throat again. He feels like gagging; he feels like drowning. He blinks away the green flecks spotting in the corners of his vision. He’s so dizzy again, all of a sudden.

“Where you belong. Where we all belong.” 

Come to us Jesse 

He shakes his head. 

Come home Let us help you

“Home?” He squeezes his eyes shut. Everything turns black, but the green is still there, invisible. Or maybe it’s all he sees. He can’t tell. “Where…”

“Let me show you.” 

He opens his eyes. Hanzo reaches out to him: one arm extended, palm-up. The tentacles follow the motion, reaching. He moves, takes half a step—

No.

Jesse draws and fires. 

It’s like all his instincts alight at once. He doesn’t realize he’s shot at Hanzo until the gun is already smoking in his hands. Then, all at once, reality seizes him, hits him with the weight of what he’s just done. And he realizes, a burning red fire behind his eyes: I’m in danger. 

The thought kickstarts the rest of his senses. The whispers in his mind lick at him, try to tell him everything is fine – We will help you Jesse We will save you There is no danger There is nothing to fear – but he thinks about white noise, drowns out their influence with it, and he stumbles back, ready to run—

Something snakes around his ankles. Tightens around them, immobilizes him. Jesse looks down with wide eyes and gritted teeth, and he realizes those things, whatever they are – tendrils, tentacles – have grown, extended past Hanzo to grab him and hold him in place, faster than he ever could have seen. 

Two more dart out in little more than black and green blurs. They curl around his wrists, flick the gun from his grip like it’s nothing. Like he’s nothing.

You are everything Jesse We are everything Let us show you Let us in We will make you what you were always meant to be

He thrashes against them uselessly. They lift him into the air. He kicks, he writhes, he yells. One wraps around his neck, and they all pull, dragging him toward Hanzo and his too-green eyes, his too-wide smile. 

“Stop,” McCree pleads, breathless, even as he’s drawn forward. His fingers flex, itching for his gun, but they too go still when the tentacles constrict around his wrists. There’s nothing he can do. He’s a rag doll, a marionette, carried by the whims of a dangerous puppeteer. 

He comes to a stop in front of Hanzo. McCree looks down, expecting to see his face. All he sees are eyes. Too many, not enough.

“Jesse.” 

He swallows. Hanzo’s voice is gentle, and for half a second, McCree can trick himself into thinking it’s his real voice. Two more tentacles curl and unfurl as they ascend, the translucent tips stroking Jesse’s sweat-sticky bangs away from his forehead. He wants to gag – they’re petting him, like he’s some kind of prized animal – but he forces himself not to react, not to show his discomfort.

Or worse, to show how much he likes it. How abhorrently safe he feels in their grip, in the warm green light of Hanzo’s eyes. 

They must know. They know everything. 

That’s right Jesse We know everything Jesse You can too We can show you everything

One of the tentacles moves from his hair to his cheek. The other wraps around his chest, slipping beneath the collar of his shirt and tracing circles over his clavicle. 

Safe Safe You are safe with us

“Trust me,” Hanzo whispers. 

And oh, does Jesse want to.

Hanzo reaches up. He extends his hand to McCree again, palm up and fingers splayed open. McCree gazes back, unblinking. The tentacles at his wrist loosen enough he can move his arms, and his fingers twitch again, itching for something else this time. A hand. A touch.

Take his hand

He reaches.

Take our hand

He does.

Hanzo pulls him down, pulls him in. The tentacles loosen themselves from Jesse’s limbs and wrap around his frame instead, a lover’s arms embracing him and drawing him close. He lets them, eyes never leaving Hanzo’s, not even to blink.

Hanzo touches his face. Jesse leans into it. They kiss, and Hanzo’s eyes slip shut.

And Jesse wakes. 

He bites. Bites Hanzo’s tongue hard enough to draw blood. But nothing happens; Hanzo does not move, does not flinch, does not waver. Not until McCree grabs him by the neck and throws him back bodily, casting his body to the ground like a broken doll.

He runs. Or tries to. The tentacles whirl around him faster than he can shove them aside, grabbing at him and curling around his hands and his wrists and his legs and his thighs, pulling him down into the dirt and dragging him closer, closer, ever closer to –

A hand grasps his jaw, thumb and forefinger digging in hard. McCree tries to yank himself free, but it’s futile. All the more so when another tentacle wraps itself around his neck and pulls him up, feet dangling above the forest floor, at the same time as Hanzo – what used to be Hanzo – stands.

Do not fight us Jesse Do not flee us

Hanzo snarls up at him, lips twisted in some freak impression of a grin. “You do not understand,” he breathes, voice hoarse and inhuman. “I have seen everything. You can see everything. We can be together like this, Jesse. Together in service of something greater than ourselves.” His eyes are wide, manic. And something else, too, something real, something small and weak and… 

Afraid. 

Jesse pulls. He fights with all his might to raise his arm, to place his hand over Hanzo’s, still tight on his jaw.

“Hanzo.” 

Nothing. He tries again. 

“Hanzo.” 

A flicker: green giving way to black. It’s almost nothing, but it’s enough. 

“You’re still there. You’re in there. I know it. Whatever this thing is – it ain’t you, partner. It ain’t you.” 

Hanzo’s grip tightens. 

It is him Jesse It is But he is so much more now We have made him more

“Don’t – don’t listen.” He can barely get the words out, so firm is Hanzo’s grip. He can feel his bones creak and grind together as he tries to speak. “They – ain’t—” 

And for a moment, Hanzo is there, staring back at him in wide-eyed horror. His fingers twitch and loosen, but then there’s a flash of green – bright, all-encompassing green, blotting out McCree’s vision – and eyes, so many, many eyes. Hanzo’s grip tightens again, yanking McCree forward, holding him in place. 

“I know what you want, Jesse.” There is no tone to his voice, nothing but quiet, insidious, tempting promise. “I have seen it. And I can give it to you. We can give it to you. The two of us… We can be together, Jesse.” He reaches out, caresses McCree’s face. His hands are cold, his nails blunt. It sends a shiver all through McCree’s body, and he finds himself reacting to it not with terror, not with revulsion, but anticipation. Eagerness.

Want. 

“We can be happy.”

McCree spits in his face. Hanzo doesn’t flinch. A tentacle comes up, tip curling and writing against the corner of McCree’s mouth. Another slips beneath his collar, one beneath the hem of his shirt. They crawl, insidious and snake-like, against his skin. Feeling. Searching.

“Let me in, Jesse,” Hanzo breathes. “Let me show you what I have seen.” 

The tentacle prods at his lips. Jesse clenches his teeth. His jaw aches. He can’t clench hard. 

“Trust me, Jesse.”

Trust him Trust us Trust Trust Trust

“I will show you.”

He wants to. He wants to trust – no, no, he doesn’t –

A push. The tentacle slips into his mouth, pokes at his molars, slips between them. He’s powerless to resist, sore and tired and scared (and ready ready ready to submit). It curls around his tongue, rubbery and pulsating as it floods his mouth with… nothing. There’s taste, there’s flavour, but it’s nothing and everything all at once, bitter and sweet and sour and salty, all cancelling each other out until all it that’s left is presence and curiosity and so, so, so many wonderful, terrible things. 

He goes limp. Stops fighting. How can he fight, when the taste in his mouth slithers down his throat, fills his entire being with that same lovely, throbbing pulse? He can’t breathe. The air has been replaced with that taste, with those eyes, Hanzo’s green and glowing eyes, swallowing him up and enveloping him in Everything everything he’s ever wanted. 

But it’s wrong. It’s still wrong and this isn’t him, he knows it’s not. He knows he has to fight it. So McCree bites down, weakly, against the tentacle, and it squirms in his mouth, jelly-like, writhing and sliding between his lips. 

The tentacles beneath his clothes curl and contort, moving ever closer to one another. More join them, slithering into his boots, under his sleeves, past the waistband of his pants. They’re soft, leathery, plush and slimy all at once: firm and overwhelming, ghost-like and light at the same time. They’re distracting, taking up what precious little space in McCree’s mind is left to fight against their pull, against Hanzo’s pull, against the pull of the I—

He looks up. The sky swims above him, swirling black and green and blue, an aurora of secrets and truths and endless possibility. The stars flash white and gold in his eyes, pinpricks searing into them and tunneling into his mind. 

Something touches him. Slowly, slowly, McCree peels his gaze from the sky, and he sees Hanzo, eyes beautiful and warm and green green green, such a lovely colour of green. The tentacles shiver in his mouth and against his skin, and McCree lets a breath escape his nose. It’s Hanzo touching him, Hanzo, a hand cupping his cheek, cool and soothing on his heated skin, a thumb caressing the corner of his dry, cracking lip. 

Hanzo smiles. It looks inhuman. Beautifully, perfectly inhuman. 

“Give in,” Hanzo says, his voice a whisper in McCree’s ear and an echo in his mind. “Give in to me, Jesse. Succumb.” 

The tentacle falls from his mouth, obedient to the thought he didn’t have. Jesse’s jaw hangs open, and he breathes, deep and ragged, lungs burning as air floods them. 

Give in Jesse Give in

No—

You want to Jesse You want him You want us

No—!

Want him Want him want him want him want to give in--

“Yes.” 

His vision explodes in green, and his eyes open at last. Every one of them: two, four, eight, too many, so many eyes, and with each and every one of them he sees. The voices in his head are his now, his and Hanzo’s together, and nothing needs to be said or thought anymore, because he’s his, he’s Hanzo’s, and McCree reaches for him, wraps himself around Hanzo at the same time the tentacles pull him in, slip inside him, penetrate him. 

And then his clothes are gone, the tentacles pulling and tearing them from his skin – his coat, his shirt, his pants, his boots. He grasps at Hanzo’s clothes, too, and finds more tentacles, rushing to obey his thoughts, his whims. They slide across Hanzo’s exposed skin, slip under his shirt, untie the ribbons and belts and ropes holding everything together, and then at last, Hanzo is naked too, and finally McCree can feel him. 

They kiss, hard and rough and wet, and he can taste it again, that wonderful, blissful lack of flavour that feels like everything and nothing all at once. It’s Hanzo, it’s the Iris, it’s both of them and all of them and everything Jesse had never known he had wanted to be until now. 

Hanzo bites his neck, sinking his teeth in and sucking a mark to it, and McCree cries out, eyes turned skyward. The sky stares back, whispers its love to him in words that don’t exist. “Yes,” he breathes, reverent and ecstatic. “I understand. I understand.”

Hanzo slips lower, kisses a trail down McCree’s chest. He kneels before him, knees on the ground while McCree is still suspended above him, and wraps his lips around his cock. McCree gasps and sighs; in the rush of everything else flooding his senses, he hadn’t realized how hard he was. Even now, it hardly seems to matter, trivial in amongst everything else he’s seeing and feeling.

But he wants it. He wants it so badly. He wants Hanzo, and he jerks his hips, fucks into his lover’s mouth, grunts and groans and cries out to the heavens as he’s sucked down and Hanzo moans around his cock. The tentacles inside him pulse and contract and expand, though whether by his own urging or Hanzo’s or something else’s he isn’t sure – but it doesn’t matter, not really, because they’re all the same, now, all together as one under the Iris. 

He comes with a cry, back arching impossibly far back. Hanzo swallows it all down and crawls up his body again, followed by two more tentacles that wrap themselves around his legs, and then a third, curling around the base of his cock and sliding, unnaturally smooth, along it. 

Hanzo forces McCree into another open-mouthed kiss. His breath is hot on McCree’s lips, his teeth sharp against his tongue. The tentacles are still inside him; they press against something inside him that sets his skin on fire, but Hanzo devours his moans as his hands grasp and clench and pull at any inch of skin they can reach. 

McCree bucks his hips. Hanzo follows the motion, rolling his own and gasping every time their cocks brush. The sound is delicious, and the voices in McCree’s head tell him he wants more more more, so he grins against Hanzo’s mouth and teases his rim with a tentacle, tracing it in circles once, twice, three times before plunging it inside. 

Hanzo writhes and bucks against McCree. His eyes go wide, his grin spreads wider, and he breathes, raspy and low and rumbling, “Yes.”

McCree bites him. Takes Hanzo’s lip between his teeth and pulls, and the laugh, the moan, the song he gets in return is sweeter than anything the Iris has given him yet. And still, the voices promise more. They promise him everything. 

“Mine,” McCree growls, sliding another tentacle into his lover. “Ours.” 

“Yours,” Hanzo agrees, in a voice that might be his. He pulls McCree further to him, hands and tentacles both curling around his arms and his back and dragging him closer, closer, until he can move and sink down on McCree’s cock. And it feels wonderful, impossible; Hanzo is slick and tight around him, even with the two other tentacles stretching him out as well. He thrusts in and out mindlessly, searching for that spot, the spot that will make Hanzo cry out and convulse and lose himself entirely—

And there it is, he hits it, over and over again, and Hanzo shudders against him, spilling himself against McCree’s chest and crying out. McCree is not far behind, and as he comes for the second time, his vision goes green again, paints everything in pretty verdant hues. The stars smile back at him from up above, and in his mind, and McCree falls back, gently, until his back hits the ground and they are all he sees.

Then Hanzo is on top of him, inside him, all around him, filling him up and consuming him. McCree touches his face, pushes strands of hair out of the way with tiny, curling tendrils. And it’s gentle, somehow. Easy. Right. Like making love, but it’s more, so much more. It’s reflected in Hanzo’s eyes, green and glowing, holding McCree there, holding him in place until he comes again, until he feels Hanzo come too, filling him up and reminding him they’re here, that they exist, that they are one. 

Hanzo stands. McCree watches him as the tentacles lift his dirty clothes off the ground and wrap him in them. He smiles, a quirk of the lip that looks almost human, and extends his hand as he stares down at McCree.

McCree takes it. He stands, and everything feels too real, and yet not real enough. Like he’s seeing everything through a filter, a beautifully green and wonderfully true filter. It’s like a dream. Yes – a dream, a dream. His life is now a dream, one he never needs to wake from. One he must share. One he must invite others into, to show others so that they might understand as well.

So that they, too, might become what they were always meant to be. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this and think you might like to see more, have a chat, or would like to get to know me, please check out my twitter [@tim3hopp3r](https://twitter.com/tim3hopp3r).
> 
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> Thank you so much for reading!


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